1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to the field of EMV payment applications.
The invention especially deals with a method for providing data during an Application Selection process
2. Description of the Related Art
EMV®(a registered trademark of EMVco) is a well known standard for the interoperation of Integrated Circuit Cards (ICC), also referred to as chip cards or smart cards, with payment terminals, also referred to as interface devices (IFD), used to initiate financial transactions. The EMV standard defines the interaction at the physical, electrical, data and application levels between secure devices such as for example smart cards and processing devices that process these secure devices, mainly a POS or an ATM fitted with a smart card reader for financial transactions. Portions of the standard are heavily based on the smart card interface standard defined in ISO 7816.
During the EMV process of an Application Selection, cardholders may choose which EMV Payment Application present on the integrated circuit card is to be selected to initiate and process the transaction. To help in the selection, the payment terminal may display a mnemonic that allows the cardholder to identify the application to be used for the transaction. The descriptive mnemonic displayed is provided to the terminal by the EMV Payment Application.
Each EMV Payment Application present on an ICC contains a file called File Control Information (FCI). During the EMV process of Application Selection, the FCI for each EMV Payment Application present on the smartcard, and mutually supported by the terminal, is transferred from the ICC to the terminal. Each FCI includes an optional Application Preferred Name and a mandatory Application Label associated with each EMV payment application. To allow the cardholder to choose which EMV Payment Application present on the integrated circuit card should be selected to initiate and process the transaction, the terminal displays the Application Preferred Name, if present, or the Application Label.
The mnemonic displayed, whether it is the Application Preferred Name or the Application Label, typically provides a description of the functionality associated with the underlying EMV Payment Application. Typical examples include: “Credit”, “Debit” or “Savings”. This mnemonic is static, which means that its value remains constant once the EMV payment application has been loaded to the ICC. It remains static throughout the life of the application.
Data involved in an EMV transaction is encapsulated and transported within data objects referred to as tags. For example, Tag ‘50’ is the Application Label and Tag ‘9F12’ is the Application Preferred Name.
The EMV standard defines tag values, the maximum lengths of the tag values, format and context. For example, tag value ‘9F12’ which corresponds to the Application Preferred Name, as the mnemonic associated with an EMV payment application, is displayed by the terminal during the Application Selection. The maximum length of tag ‘9F12’ is given by EMV standard as 16 bytes.
EMV standard does not allow to alter the value of tags that are located within the File Control Information (FCI). For this reason, the value of the Application Preferred Name is said to be static over the lifecycle of the application.
There is a need to provide a method that allows the mnemonic displayed to the cardholder during the process of Application Selection to vary over the course of the card's lifecycle.